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How to bake an elearning course

It occurred to me that instructional design of an elearning course has similarities to baking a cake. What parallels can you think of? What elearning skills are required to go from home baker to professional pastry chef?

Bake for your audience

First understand who you are baking for so you can choose a recipe to suit – no point on baking a nut cake for a person with a nut allergy.

Alternatively no point using lots of high definition video for a company that has little bandwidth or creating a course full of audio when your audience’s computers have no speakers. Choose tools, techniques, and an appropriate tone to match your target audience.

Keep the occasion in mind

Why are you baking a cake, is it for a birthday, a baby shower, a wedding, or something else? The purpose will inform what sort of cake you will make and how it is presented.

In elearning the why is also important. Why is an elearning course being developed? What’s the strategic purpose and the performance goal? You’ll need to know this before exploring possible solutions.

The ingredients

What and how much ingredients are needed to successfully bake your cake?

This is where we set the specific learning objectives. What are the behaviours that are required for success and how important are each of these? Cathy Moore’s action mapping is an excellent method for sourcing both your performance goal and your learning objectives.

Content of the recipe

The baking instructions are always in order, with the equipment needed.

With an elearning course, you also need to logically chunk and sequence the content so it flows in a coherent manner. What equipment is needed to support making the content i.e. rapid elearning tools, multimedia software and equipment, project documentation.

Final checks before baking

Review the recipe. Do you have everything you need?

Check your proposed solution with your stakeholders and and adjust the solution to ensure there is agreement on what the end result will be.

Baking your cake

Put your cake in the oven, set timer, watch for quality. Use a skewer to test.